Blood and Honor
by Needless Darkness
Summary: The risk of blood-loss and bodily injury is in every one of Task 141's job descriptions, and most of its members accept this as an unpleasant but necessary part of their duties. To Roach, however, it's more like a perk. Roach/Ghost slash


**AN: Rated M for vampire-free blood-letting, sex, and gaiety – possibly at the same time. This has the potential to squick some people obviously, so if the aforementioned situation isn't really tolerable for you (and I can certainly understand why) hit the back-button. This is mostly a pwp. Also keep in mind that I'm a Canadian writing for a mostly-American audience with mostly-British characters. So I apologize in advance for any spelling/cultural oddities. By necessity, this takes place prior to the second game in the Modern Warfare series, but after the first one.**

Lieutenant Simon "Ghost" Riley couldn't be certain of exactly when it became apparent to him that one of his underlings had a rather bizarre interest in, and perhaps even a fixation on, blood. But Sergeant Gary Sanderson, whom his squad referred to as "Roach", had one; that much he was sure of. He could recall all these little incidents over the course of their time together on the team; small occurrences that hadn't meant much to him when he had first observed them - cuts on his body almost continuously, little drops of blood on his skin and clothes even when there was no apparent cause, the way he never seemed to manage to shave without nicking himself - but when he stopped to consider them in summation, he could only draw one conclusion. Roach had some kind of _thing _with blood.

It unnerved him a little; after all, what did it mean, exactly? Was it some kind of textbook curiosity that only manifested itself as an interest in blood because it's so plentiful in their line of work, or was it like some kind of _sexual_ fetish? Ghost didn't really want to dwell on that possibility. He didn't know much about it and didn't want to. Blood was vital in keeping you going - period. But to Roach, it was obviously something else as well.

If that wasn't it then Ghost was all out of ideas. And Roach's blood-thing was what was on his mind when he strayed a little too close to the explosive impact of a grenade on a reconnaissance mission. He wasn't really injured badly, he thought, but his side was bleeding in one place and there was at least a dozen separate bits of metal lodged in his left arm. He had only glanced down at it for a moment before someone grabbed him from behind, pulling him out of the enemies' lines of fire. It was Roach, and he immediately pushed up the tattered remains of his commanding officer's sleeve up to assess the damage to his limb.

_What the hell is he doing?_ Ghost thought to himself.

"It's _nothing, _Roach!" he shouted, "There's scores of these bastards left - just _leave _it!"

Roach did let go of his arm, which he had been holding quite _gently_, but not before he did something pretty inexplicable. He angled one of his own wrists so that the bare skin between the cuff of his shirt and the top of his glove caught a drop of blood from one of Ghost's wounds. Ghost shot him a bewildered look which he knew the other man couldn't see through the mask and sunglasses he always wore on the field before bodily shoving him away. He tried to forget Roach's odd behaviour for the moment and focus on the task at hand because the next time he let his mind wander it could result in grievous bodily harm or death.

The mission was successful and as soon as Task 141 had made it back to their temporary base and been given a break for the evening, Ghost found himself being forcibly led by Roach (who had been keeping an uncomfortably close eye on him since he had sustained his injury) to his room. Once there,Ghost was pushed - albeit gently, but _pushed_ nevertheless- by his subordinate into a sitting position on top of his bed (with the little blood drops present of course) and made to wait while Roach procured medical supplies from the nightstand next to his bed. While he waited he began to pick little pieces of metal out of his forearm with his opposite hand but Roach batted it away. He had a weird look in his eyes, Ghost thought, and he could see his own nearly-dry blood on the other man's wrist as he worked on removing the jagged metal pieces embedded in his commanding officer's arm.

Since Roach didn't seem to want his help, he let his eyes wander a bit. They settled on the contents of Roach's nightstand drawer. Roach was kneeling in front of him, Ghost's arm in his hand, meticulously picking at the bleeding limb so he didn't notice that Ghost's attention had waned. It piqued again, though, when he saw what was in the drawer. A medical scalpel. There was no conceivable reason for Roach to have this. It was long, thin and silver with a gleaming, razor-sharp blade. He picked it up without Roach noticing and turned it over in his hand. It had rust-colored blood on its blade. _Of course. _

Ghost sighed and looked back over at Roach who was methodically wiping blood away from one of Ghost's wounds with an antiseptic-soaked wipe.

"Is this what you use?" he asked.

"Hmm?" Roach said without looking up.

"This? To cut yourself?"

Roach paused in his work, although he didn't let go of Ghost's arm, and looked up at what Ghost was holding. He didn't answer immediately as he resumed tending to the other man's arm. He shrugged.

"You know. Why bother asking?"

"Show me them," Ghost said, not really understanding what compelled him to request that.

Roach stayed where he was for a few moments more, gently bathing sections his commanding officer's injured limb in antiseptic before relinquishing his hold on it and rising to his feet. He glanced at the door, perhaps making sure it was closed, and began to unbutton the top part of his uniform. He didn't take it completely off so Roach wondered why he bothered to unbutton his cuffs, but he let Ghost get a good look at the wounds on the front of his torso - there were _dozens_. Some were old and white, but others were fresh and painful-looking. They were in random places, too, with some close to his clavicles and others disappearing below the waistband of his pants. Roach had bandages and gauze among the medical accoutrements he kept next to his bed so Ghost was made to wonder why he hadn't bothered to dress his own injuries.

Ghost reached forward and touched a particularly severe-looking slash on Roach's side with the palm of his hand, and the other man inhaled sharply, eliciting the softest of sounds saturated with unmistakable lust. Ghost pulled his hand back quickly. Some of the other man's blood had rubbed off on to it. He looked back up at Roach's face.

"Don't lose enough blood the old-fashioned way then, do you? With exit-wounds?" he joked weakly, although he didn't find the situation amusing in the slightest.

He wished he hadn't been so nosy; he should've pretended he hadn't seen the knife. Now that it was all out in the open, he probably should say something to the captain. He could imagine it now: "Sir, the cockroach's a few sandwiches short of a full picnic basket and doesn't know that the business-end of a blade is supposed to be pointed at the enemy."

_For fuck's sake._

He trained what he hoped was an exasperated look at the other man.

"The hell's this all about, then? Is it a cry for help or some kinda," he waved a hand in the air dismissively for emphasis, "sex-thing?"

Of course he already knew the answer to that; the sound Roach had made moments ago had already confirmed it, but he wanted to hear it out loud. Besides, he was hoping that maybe the other man didn't know that Ghost had heard it - it had been such a soft sound after all - and he wanted to spare Roach from some kind of awkward admittance that Ghost was capable of educing such a blatantly erotic sound from him in the first place.

Roach dithered for a moment, rubbing one hand with the other maybe to comfort himself before looking up at Ghost again, his dark brown eyes meeting Ghost's golden brown ones. Ghost immediately felt uncomfortable. Roach's eyes held such an intense emotion, but Ghost didn't think he could interpret it.

"You already know the answer to that, too," Roach murmured softly.

Ghost hesitated. He didn't know quite what to say. He felt he should reprimand the younger man somehow, but he experienced a strange feeling of role-reversal, like he was the one expected to explain himself. Suddenly he felt a liquid drip from his arm and realized that his wounded limb was still bleeding freely, little rivulets of blood running down his hand. He noticed the other man eyeing the blood trails and he reached for a piece of sterile cloth to catch the drip, but before he could Roach had taken his arm and brought it near his lips. Ghost was shocked into stillness while the other man began to gently lave a wound near his wrist with his tongue, sending a not-entirely-unpleasant tingling through his body. With consternation, Ghost recognized it as the first stirring of sexual arousal in himself and immediately snatched his arm back. He stared hard at the other man, stunned and a little short of breath. He wanted to say something but just the fact that Roach had blood on his lips - _his _blood on his lips - didn't help his mind in its quest to form cogent thoughts.

He finally stood up with some difficulty from the bed and backed up toward the door.

"Listen, how you get off during a wank-session is none of my business, but your health is. If you're injured and bleeding you're not gonna be able to perform in the field like we need you to. Your body belongs to 141 - you can play with it but you can't damage it needlessly."

Roach stood up, too, and shook his head. Ghost noticed that his shirt was still undone and many of his cuts were glowing in stark shades of crimson - bright red slashes on otherwise attractive tanned skin. Ghost realized then that he had never seen the other man before without his top, or if he had, then he hadn't paid too much attention. Suddenly, though, Roach was in the forefront of his mind. Part of his brain was trying to tell him that in addition to being possibly deeply disturbed, Roach was actually _really _attractive, so maybe that was why he was suddenly so interesting.

Ghost tried hard not to entertain anymore inappropriate thoughts like that about the other man as he fingered the sharp blade in his hand.

"I know that knives and razors are plentiful here and that there's no way I can take 'em all away so I'm ordering you to stop all this fourteen-year-old girl shite while you're with us. If you need the pain to get off ... just ... bite your lip hard or something'."

He held Roach's blade up.

"And I'm takin' this 'cause I know it's too bloody tempting for you to have lying around."

Roach hesitated. Ghost noticed his eyes were still on his bleeding arm. He instinctively covered it with his other one.

"This is an order: no more cuttin' yourself. Is that understood?"

He was trying to respond like a commanding officer would, like the way he thought someone like Captain MacTavish would, or any other normal person with at least an iota of commonsense, but inwardly he was still trying to get over how _alluring _the younger man had looked - and sounded - when he had touched that cut on his body; and the way he looked now, a portion of his bottom lip still stained crimson.

"Yes, sir," Roach answered, nodding his assent.

That was good enough for Ghost for now. He exited the other man's room and closed the door, blood-stained scalpel still in his hand. He passed Neon, Meat, and their Captain who merely eyed the scalpel in his hand without saying anything. Ghost pocketed it and walked on, blood still running down his arm.

That night, as he was lying on his bed, freshly bandaged arm pressed against freshly bandaged side (both of which he had wrapped himself), he found his thoughts drifting to Roach. He should have been exhausted from the day's excursions but he couldn't sleep. He had closed his eyes and counted sheep until he felt murderous, but it didn't help because his mind couldn't resolve the fact that he was maybe a little attracted to Roach, and maybe even that to blood thing. But going over it again and again in his mind with no resolution in sight was driving him up a fucking tree. He couldn't think about the blood-encrusted scalpel; about his blood on Roach's wrist; about Roach's cuts; and about that fucking _thing _Roach had done with his arm. He shivered at the memory.

He got up out of his bed and threw on a clean T-shirt. He hesitated by his bedroom door for a moment as his eye was caught by something silver glinting in the wan light of his room. The scalpel. It was peeking out of a pocket of his combat-gear. Absentmindedly he ran a hand over the covered injury on his side. He realized then that the appeal wasn't the blade itself or what it was capable of - it was all Roach really, it was what _he _was capable of. Ghost knew he shouldn't waste time with thoughts like that. He needed to get out of his room, even just down the hall for a moment or two, to try to clear his head somewhat, even by just a modicum.

When he ventured out of his room, he noticed that the light was on in Roach's. He stopped in front of the door, his hand hovering in front of it. He wanted to knock, but then he knew he shouldn't. He was almost ready to leave when Roach's voice stopped him.

"Ghost?"

He felt a strange flutter in his chest at the sound of the other man's voice. How did Roach know it was him? He knew ignoring him would only make things more awkward between them so he opened the door and stepped in, closing it behind him. The other man was lying on top of his bedcovers dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and cotton pants. He had been reading something but now his eyes were trained on Ghost. He smiled slightly and Ghost found his eyes darting down to the other man's mouth. Roach's bottom lip was bleeding, he noticed, not merely wet with someone else's.

Did this mean that Roach had taken his advice about what to do if he _needed _to hurt himself to get off? He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to banish the image of Roach biting his lip in ecstasy as he jerked himself off from his mind. He needed to focus on something else immediately, he thought, like the fact that Roach was wearing a long-sleeved shirt to bed. Did that mean that he had new cuts on his body that he didn't want Ghost to see?

"What it is?" Roach asked him from his supine position on the bed.

"Nothin'," Ghost replied quickly.

He ran a hand through his close-cropped chestnut hair, admittedly feeling a little out of sorts conversing with Roach without his usual battle-gear. He felt a little less machine, and a little more human than he wanted to at the moment.

Roach put the book he had been reading down (a weapon's manual), and sat up on his bed. He fixed Ghost with a disbelieving look.

"I guess I just wanted to see how you're gettin' on," Ghost continued quickly, finding himself talking for the sole purpose of just saying something.

The other man shrugged.

"Can't complain. How's your arm, sir?"

Ghost had forgotten all about it. He wished Roach hadn't called him "sir" - it only served to make the situation even more awkward for him than it already was. He was Roach's senior officer, Task Force 141's second-in-command - so while did he still feel so nervous around the other man?

" 'S fine," he replied, looking around the room.

Ghost was remembering the other man's lips on his arm, pulling it to his mouth, _tasting_ his wound. He felt himself shivering all over again at the memory.

"You're alright, though, sir?"

Ghost trained a look on the other man that he hoped looked severe and didn't belie his nervousness.

"I told you, I'm fine."

But he wasn't wearing a mask anymore, and for some reason, he felt like Roach could see right through his skin. There was a lull in the almost-conversation the two men had been having where they just looked at each other. But Roach didn't look nervous like Ghost felt.

"Come here," Roach commanded softly.

Ghost was grateful that he hadn't called him "sir" again; maybe he had noticed the shift in power between them. Nervously, Ghost sat down next to Roach on his bed, one hand absentmindedly running over the covered injury on his side. He could see the other man watching him out of the corner of his eye.

"I forgot that you'd gotten hurt here, too," Roach remarked softly, tracing the spot on Ghost's side, where his hand had been only moments before.

The spot where Roach touched him seemed to burn softly, but it wasn't from pain. Ghost felt his heartbeat speed up as the other man carefully lifted the bottom of his shirt up to expose the bandaged wound. Roach touched the gauze gingerly for a moment but he kept his fingers moving, trailing them across the skin just above his navel. Ghost closed his eyes for a second or two, trying to control his breathing which was threatening to become erratic. He put his own hand over the other man's wrist to stop him from moving it. He had intended to push the Roach's hand off of his body but found that he couldn't.

"You haven't kept on with that self-harm shit have you?" he asked instead, gesturing towards Roach's long-sleeved shirt.

Roach shook his head and gestured to his injured lip.

"You didn't notice this? I'm not going to disobey your orders, sir."

Once again, an uncomfortably erotic image of the other man popped up in Ghost's mind.

"Roach, I can't..."

He trailed off, shaking his head. Once more, he didn't know what to say. He moved to stand up but Roach grasped his hand. In a flash Ghost had the other man pinned down to the bed, a hand pressed to his throat. Roach touched that hand, his eyes locking with the other man's, but he didn't try to remove it. Ghost fixed him with a poisonous glare, his fingers pressing harder against the other man's throat, but still Roach didn't seem scared, or even intimidated in the least. He merely moved his hand behind the other's man's head, exerting the slightest amount of pressure there. Ghost released his hold on the other man, letting Roach gently pull him closer until before he fully realized what had happened, Ghost's lips were touching the other man's. He breathed in shakily against Roach's mouth as the other man's mouth pressed against him in the smallest semblance of a kiss.

"I'm not fucking gay," Ghost tried to growl, but his voice sounded more breathless than he had intended.

Ghost felt the other man's lips stretch into a grin against him.

"Neither am I," he whispered.

Ghost pulled back a little, trying to force himself to think clearly despite the circumstances. He stared hard at the other man. Roach's dark eyes looked glossy, his face flushed, and his lips were parted - a little rivulet of blood running down his chin. Ghost knew that this was his last chance to get away and never look back. He knew that if he kissed him again they wouldn't ever be able to go back to normal. Ghost knew for certain now that anything he did with the other man would be of his own volition, and that degree of control scared him immeasurably.

Finally, and maybe only to distract the other man from his noticing his trembling hands, he leaned forward and captured Roach's lips in a fierce, all-consuming kiss. Ghost found himself almost savouring the taste of blood on the other man's mouth because it was Roach's. He was trying to regulate his breathing, trying and failing to stop himself from making any sound to indicate pleasure even as he pulled the other man almost impossibly close, his tongue darting into his mouth to taste its velvet heat. He was kissing him hard, almost desperately, not knowing how to quell the sudden surge of emotions he felt rising within him. He was panting and gasping and trying to get away, but at the same time, _needing_ to stay. And Roach was kissing him back passionately; Ghost felt himself being kissed - quite literally - breathless.

He pushed Roach down on the bed hard without separating their mouths. He kissed and sucked on the other man's lower lip as he moved to straddle his hips. His hands were everywhere, touching Roach's face, running down his arms, under his shirt to feel sharply-defined muscles and soft skin, and over the ridges and caverns of his lacerated torso. He pulled his lips away from Roach's momentarily so he could pull his shirt off over his head. Roach grinned, running a hand down over one of Ghost's well-defined shoulders, perhaps in admiration.

"You're beautiful," he whispered, removing any doubt.

Ghost bent down to kiss him again before pulling Roach's own shirt off of him. Once again, he was caught staring at the milieu of scars and cuts criss-crossing his torso, but they were much less startling to him than when he had first seen them earlier that day. Experimentally, he trailed the tips of his fingers across Roach's mostly self-inflicted injuries, his touch feather-light. Roach inhaled sharply but once again Ghost could tell that it wasn't entirely in pain. Ghost was studying the scars, liking the reactions touching them pulled from the other man. And yet ... Ghost couldn't help pitying him. Whether it enhanced his sexual pleasure or not, Ghost felt it hard to believe that that was the only reason Roach self-mutilated. Some part of him must despise himself, even just a little bit, in order to be able to do that to himself. The cuts and scars marred the appearance of his body, made it less attractive than it could have been (which in Ghost's opinion, would have been nothing less than masculine perfection). Still though, Ghost found them oddly appealing to him, if only because they were an important (and enigmatic) part of the younger man.

Roach touched the side of Ghost's face, directing his line of sight away from his body to his face.

"I'm sorry you have to look at them," he said.

Ghost traced a long red scar on Roach's chest with a finger softly, before leaning down to press his lips to the wound, tasting the unmistakable metallic tang of blood. He could hear Roach's breathing quicken, and he sucked the wound gently the way Roach had done with his, loving the way the breathy moan he elicited from the other man sounded. He kissed his way up his body, his lips ghosting over the imperfections marring Roach's skin, before stopping when he reached the side of his neck, sucking, licking, and gently biting the sensitive flesh there. While Roach was suitably distracted, Ghost swept a hand down his body until he reached the waistband of the other man's pants. He hesitated for a moment, but desire outweighed logic in his mind as he had pulled the rest of Roach's clothes off, his hand immediately reaching down to caress Roach's cock.

"Fuck, Ghost," he moaned throatily.

Slowly Ghost began run his hand up and down Roach's length in a rhythmic pattern. It had been so long since he'd done this with another man - and even then, it had been more about abject sexual frustration and near-desperation to get off with anyone other than himself than real desire. He knew that this time it was completely different because he found himself pulling back from Roach's face to watch his reactions to his touches, delighted in the incredibly erotic sounds he elicited from the other man's mouth - he didn't think he'd ever been as attracted to anyone else as he was to Roach right here, right now. He leaned down again, sealing his lips against the other man's, swallowing the sounds of his moans.

Ghost was hard himself. He didn't even have to reach down to check - he just knew. And it was so strange to be getting off on another person's pleasure. He didn't have to do too much before Roach was close; like him, he probably had plenty of pent-up sexual energy to contend with.

"Simon, wait -"

Breathing hard, face flushed, and pupils dilated, Roach reached down to grasp Ghost's hardness in one of his hands. He only had to stroke his cock for a few short moments before Ghost was in a state nearing his own. He pulled Ghost down more completely on top of him so their cocks were pressed flush together. Both men couldn't help moaning loudly when Ghost started to rub against him, so Roach captured his lips in another soul-searing kiss before the sounds they were making woke up the entire team of men in the room's adjoining.

"Fuck, Gary, right fuckin' there," Ghost heard himself breathing out in between heated kisses.

Ghost felt the other man's lips move to his neck, sucking and licking at a particularly sensitive spot near where his neck joined his left shoulder, and Ghost knew it was going to leave a mark, but right then he didn't care. It was intensely erotic, especially the way the other man bit down on that spot to stifle his moans as he neared completion.

They were both close now. Instinctively, Ghost was trying to control himself, trying to stave off orgasm if only to make the feelings Roach was inducing in him last longer. At the same time, though, he knew he _needed _to come soon if he had wanted to have any hope of retaining his sanity.

He holding the other man down against the mattress with one hand so he could keep him still while he moved his body against him, and he ran his other hand between them so he could brush against Roach's cuts like before, only now much more insistently. He felt the other man bite down harder on the skin on his neck, felt his lips positively vibrating with pleasure against his skin. Ghost sped up his ministrations until the other man came, biting down on Ghost's neck hard enough to draw blood, something that Ghost found he liked at that moment. He pulled back a small distance from the other man and jerked himself off at a furious pace until he came on Roach's stomach with a shuddering moan - seminal fluid mixing with blood and sweat on the other man's skin.

For a few moments, all either man did was try to recover, Ghost slumped down next to the other man, his face buried in Roach's shoulder.

"Fuck," Roach said, elongating the vowel, and Ghost laughed tiredly against him.

He thought it summed up the evening rather succinctly. He leaned over to press his lips to the other man's.

"Sorry 'bout the mess but it seemed like the most appropriate course of action to take at the time."

Roach shook his head.

"I liked it," he said softly.

Ghost kissed his neck in a silent response before rising to his feet.

Ghost pulled on his pants and picked his shirt up off the floor, as Roach watched him.

"You don't want to go for another round?" he offered, his expression almost coy.

"I'm sorely tempted," Ghost admitted, leaning back down to place one last lingering kiss on the other man's lips, "but then I might be too tired to go back to my own room. Couldn't be good for someone to find me here in the mornin'. Tomorrow?"

Roach nodded, leaning in to lick a trickle of blood from the fresh wound on Ghost's neck.

"Stop it, mate. You're making me hard all over again."

He pulled himself away and opened the door as quietly as he could, closing it behind him. He only had to look up before he was struck dumb by the sight of his Captain standing in front of him wearing only his boxers and a knowing grin.

"Got everything sorted, then, Lieutenant?" he asked in his distinctive Scottish brogue, quirking an eyebrow.

Ghost didn't know how to reply. He was holding a shirt in his hand, he was covered in a light sheen of sweat and Roach's blood, there was a fresh wound on his neck, his face was flushed, his hair was mussed, and he was probably wearing one of the guiltiest expressions his Captain had ever seen.

"Umm...yes, sir," he managed.

Soap nodded, still with that bemused expression, his eyes flickering briefly to that tell-tale spot on Ghost's neck.

"Try to get at least a couple hours of sleep," he advised, "big day tomorrow."

Ghost watched his Captain stride off, presumably back to his own room, and even though he didn't say anything else, Ghost was sure he knew. He _must _know. His expression had said everything Ghost needed to know.

"Cat's bloody well outta the bag now," he muttered to himself, and felt his feet lead him back to Roach's room, thinking he might as well take him up on his offer after all.


End file.
